What makes for an outstanding online food shopping experience? Excellent prices, a good product assortment, and a website that's easy to navigate. You'll increasingly find it from a specialty food retailer like a Korean market up to a sizeable traditional supermarket. What's more, you'll enjoy the convenience of home delivery, or curbside pick up from a store location near you. The next generation of online grocery shopping is here as shoppers increasingly prefer to order online instead of walking the aisles of a store and standing in a checkout line. Anything that saves time also adds convenience.

While there had been a trend toward online food shopping, it kicked into high gear during the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns. People opted to shop virtually and have home delivery or opt for curbside pick-up. At the same time, grocers of all types invested in improvements to their online markets. The goal is generally to make it possible to complete an order with as few clicks as possible – and the add convenient features such as online list-making and quick-pick suggestions based on previous orders. If you haven't tried shopping a virtual market lately, it's worth revisiting. They've improved considerably.

If you or someone you cook for has special dietary needs, virtual grocery stores can be a big help. For example, many websites today offer advanced sorting capabilities that allow you to see all products of a certain kind at the click of a button. You might select sugar-free, low-fat, dairy-free, low-sodium, gluten-free, and several others. It makes food shopping much easier than walking aisles in search of products that meet your dietary needs, and you may by accident discover some new ones you never knew existed. It's those kinds of features that are eye-opening if you've never tried placing an online grocery order.

The time-saving value of home delivery also shouldn't be underestimated. If you reduce the time taken up by your grocery shopping to entering an order and putting things away after they're delivered, you'll save more than half the time you would have spent running out to a store. It's also helpful if any of your favorite stores have a habit of being out of certain products. When you shop virtually, you'll view in-stock items and can decide where to place your order based on what's available versus what you have on your shopping list. It's better than arriving at a store only to find they are sold out of what you need.